


From These Emerald Waters

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Death and Dying, Established Relationship, F/M, Near Death Experiences, Not Really Character Death, Trespasser Spoilers, coming to terms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was once a time when she was prepared to die for her duty, but hoped she might live. This is different: that she is prepared to die and hoping only that she might live long enough.</p><p>Trespasser spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From These Emerald Waters

_From these emerald waters doth life begin anew.  
Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you._

*

It didn’t come as much of a surprise as she might have thought it would when Caitrin realized something was wrong.

She was asleep, alone in her quarters at Skyhold, when a spike of pain up the length of her left arm woke her with a subdued yelp. The Anchor had always caused her some amount of discomfort, especially when she came near a Fade rift, but this—a sudden, sharp shot like an arrow through her palm—was new.

Caitrin gripped her wrist with her right hand and grimaced until the Mark faded back to its usual, dull glow, sparking once, then again. Only then did she climb out of her absurdly ill-proportioned bed and walk to the balcony doors, pushing them open and out into the cold air. The sky beyond the mountains was pale grey with the dawn.

The Anchor sparked again angrily, and Caitrin gripped the rail until the throb in her arm faded to the dull aching that had become familiar over the past few years. When, she wondered, had it started to feel worse? 

Since Corypheus, she thought bitterly, only she’d been too preoccupied with the aftermath of saving the world that she hadn’t thought much about it. That was almost two years before, and the Mark hurt more than it had when she’d first woken with it burning on her palm after the Conclave.

Back then—Caitrin closed her eyes to a cool rush of wind that swept away the last of the warmth of her bed clinging to her. Back then, Solas had stabilized the mark with his rift magic. Only Solas was gone and there was no one else who could do the same for her now.

Below her, the sounds of Skyhold in the morning carried clearly through the thin air. The keep was waking, and she listened to the rising noise of her Inquisition. It had grown so large in those past few years. It had accomplished so much. It could accomplish so much more.

And she was dying. Caitrin opened her eyes, looked out at the first edge of gold bursting from the grey, and knew it was true.

Caitrin turned away from the rising sun, toward her now-chilled rooms. Death had never frightened her. How could it, when she’d risked hers countless times over the years? When she had willingly offered it up for the security of Thedas by accepting the role she’d been given? No, it did not shake her. 

It was only that there was just so much work left to be done, and so little time left for it.

*

Much of her official correspondence could be handled by Josephine or, more likely, the small army of diplomatic agents the Inquisition acquired over the years. Caitrin still wrote condolence letters herself, though there were far fewer to write these days, the work of the Inquisition being somewhat different than it was before. Other business letters could be delegated. Her personal letters were her own, and these she kept locked in the bottom drawer of her desk.

The letter to _Divine Victoria_ was not one of these letters she could defer to a careful hand, nor was it a personal letter to Cassandra. 

Caitrin took breakfast in her chambers, sent a note to Josephine about her decision on the Exalted Council, and sat in front of ink-splattered parchment, where she had tried several times to start the letter to the Divine. At long last, when her tea was stone cold, she ripped a smaller piece of parchment and wrote:

_To Her Perfection, Divine Victoria, Most Holy, Defender of the Chantry, etc._

_The time to settle the future of the Inquisition is here. Convene the Exalted Council at your earliest convenience._

_Cadash_

Cassandra would appreciate the brevity of the note, she thought with a lingering smile as she rolled the parchment and pressed her seal into a lump of black wax. 

Setting the missive to the side, Caitrin massaged her thumb into the area of her palm around the Anchor to soothe the ache. Ferelden was anxious for the Exalted Council, and while Orlais was less determined to draw blood, they would want to begin quickly. If she sent the note on Leliana’s fastest crow, she could expect the Council to begin within two months. Six weeks at the earliest. 

That drew a weary sigh from her. It was barely enough time, but it would have to be enough. Enough time to prepare the Inquisition for whatever happened, and perhaps _she_ would have enough time after to help them when the negotiations were finished. Some parts of Thedas had not wholly recovered, might never quite recover from Corypheus, but they might have the Inquisition with them, which was a far cry better than nothing at all.

If she was particularly lucky, if her body could hold up to the Anchor just a bit longer, she could live to see more than the culmination of her life’s work, but the people who had made it worthwhile, too.

She opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took out the stack of letters, bundled together with a hay string. Letters from Tevinter were written in Dorian’s elegant script, overflowing with fond hyperbole. Those from Kirkwall were in Varric’s extravagant, looping hand and spanned five pages or more, detailing his work in the Merchant’s Guild, inviting her to see him, if she only had the time. Below those were Cassandra’s brief notes, though they were no less fond, or less treasured, and Vivienne’s artfully constructed missives, full of information she’d thought useful for the Inquisition. 

At the bottom were the ones she read through the most often, creased and worn from unfolding and reading and folding again, sometimes several times a day. They came from Denerim, from Markham, Nevarra, Rivain, and Montsimmard, often curled around a small wooden carving, and always sealed in wax with a smudged thumbprint. 

Thom’s handwriting was hurried, illegible in some places, and his letters were never especially long, but he wrote often enough to make up for it. Caitrin thought Josephine took some joy in leaving these letters on her desk, setting them apart from correspondence related to Inquisition business, carefully lined up with the grooves of her desk. 

She didn’t respond to all his letters, not always knowing where a crow might find him next, and hadn’t intended to write again until she received word that he’d safely arrived in—wherever it was he’d gone to next. 

More than six months she’d gone without seeing him while he searched alone, making amends where he could, tying off all his old loose ends. Caitrin supported the idea when he raised it with her at the feast they held on the first anniversary of Corypheus’ fall; she’d even tapped some of her old contacts in the Carta to help him find the men and women who’d spread like the wind over the years.

It had taken time to find them all before Thom left. Time that she spent traveling, sometimes with him and sometimes without, thinking continually of an ice cave in mountains of the south; of a faded shadow of a man who told her to hold fast to whatever joy she could find between the duty thrust on her. Ameridan had been right. She’d known it then, had embraced the idea, but one by one, her friends left to return to the lives they’d had before the Inquisition, and she remained.

And, finally, Thom left, too, with a warm embrace and a promise that it would be no time at all before he was back.

She would have to tell him the truth of it all, would have to tell all of them, if she could only find the words to do it. 

Caitrin settled instead for short messages for her friends, struggling to keep her breath still in her chest as she wrote. A quiet request that they might attend the Exalted Council on behalf of the Inquisition. A hope that she might see them again soon, having become accustomed to their company in Skyhold. All her best, etc.

Her letter to Thom was longer, but she stopped short of mentioning the Anchor to him, hovering the tip of her quill over the page until a drop of ink stained the page, blotting out the start of her next sentence. She didn’t care to lie to him, but if she wrote him about the Mark, he would prematurely abandon something that meant a great deal more to him than—than what? There was nothing to be done about her fate, and it was too cruel to ask Thom to return only to watch her fade away.

Caitrin finished the letter without writing anything at all about the Anchor and scattered sand across the surface of the page, deciding there would be time enough for farewell. Then she pressed her trembling, pain-stricken thumb into the molten center of her wax seal, and exhaled.

*

Certainly enough, once the Divine’s response came, the weeks blinked past quickly.

The Anchor hurt abominably some days, and others it was barely a whisper of pain, though always there. Caitrin found that her body ached sometimes, and she discreetly retreated to her solitude when the fevers overtook her, leaving her shivering under a heap of furs and clenching her Marked hand in a painfully tight fist. Her time was shortening. Some days it felt as though stubborn will alone was keeping her alive long enough to see this through. 

It left her irritable, though the others could have rightly assumed it was her concern for the future of the Inquisition after the upcoming negotiations. Cullen was at first convinced of the honor of their work, of the certainty they would be left as they were. Leliana was suspicious and spent long hours alone in the rookery, writing letters and pouring herself over the information her spies sent, as if it would reveal something to save them. Josephine worked, refusing even a moment to contemplate what it might mean if she failed in her work and the Inquisition was torn apart. 

The rest of the Inquisition held its breath and hoped they might all still be there when the Council’s work was finished.

By the time they left Skyhold, her gloved hand lingering only an instant on the stones of her castle, Caitrin was ready for whatever the Council might bring. As their Inquisitor, it was her duty, perhaps her final duty, to give the Inquisition a chance to accomplish the things she would leave undone. 

The rest of her that remained when that was done she would keep for herself.

*

Even in all their fear, they spoke of the future with bright hope.

It was the first thing Caitrin noticed from the nervous buzzing around the courtyard in front of the Winter Palace. They each knew the situation was grave for the Inquisition, that there was every chance the Inquisition could be dismantled, or else rendered toothless, but no one really seemed to believe it when they whispered among themselves. The Inquisitor was the one they placed their hopes in, trusting that whatever future she secured for them would be the correct one.

Caitrin had long before became uncomfortably familiar with the faith the Inquisition placed in her. It was no more comfort to face their hopes, knowing that they would need to place their confidence in another if they would succeed past her death.

When she found Varric in the center of the courtyard with his harassed seneschal and a devil-may-care grin, her heart pricked with regret. He spoke earnestly of a future, of _her_ future, where she might be something more than what she’d been before, but without tying herself to the Inquisition forever. It burned in her chest, hotter and more painful than anything the Mark had been like. 

How could he know that it was different for her, to plan for all their disparate futures, knowing she could not share them? No, Caitrin did not yet have the heart to tell him, or any of them. 

Not yet. Not while there was time left.

*

_Is it selfish to hope?_ Thom asked her. His face was honest, open and pleading. A prayer for a future he couldn’t know she had no way to give him.

It shattered her, but it wasn’t selfish for him to want that. Not when it was all she wanted since Ameridan’s steely eyes softened and he told her to make the best of what she had. 

Caitrin answered _no_ because it wasn’t selfish to want a life that might have been, the same she wanted since even before Cassandra echoed Ameridan’s words when she asked if Caitrin might _marry_ Thom. Of course it’s what she wanted.

It wasn’t selfish, she reminded herself over and over when his hands in hers and later, with his mouth on her bared shoulder and a pleasurable sort of ache between her thighs dimmed by the clattering shriek of pain spread like vines from her hand through her whole body. It wasn’t selfish. _Isn’t_ selfish.

It isn’t.

But it’s all he’ll ever know of her.

*

When her hand flared again, bolts of pain brought Caitrin to her knees. Her axe felt heavier on her back than it had in years, since before she’d begun training when she was a girl. The pain weakened her, deteriorated what remained of her, but she staggered to her feet, waving the others away.

“It’s fine,” she lied, because it couldn’t be time to tell them. There was still too much to do to tell them yet, but the time was fast coming.

And if Cassandra paused before following her, if Thom exchanged a dark look with Dorian, Caitrin pretended not to notice. She pressed steel into her spine to keep herself upright and sidestepped a pile of rubble, as if her arm weren’t engulfed in pain so intense she bit her tongue to keep from making a noise.

*

Somewhere along the way, sometime while recklessly blowing apart a crumbling, volatile lyrium mine, Caitrin stopped lying to herself.

Water poured down the stairs as they ran up them, jumping past holes in the rock, and her hand glowed, emitting sparks more frequently now. It was coming too fast to deny now, the power building in the Anchor, the pain that disrupted her gait, but she kept running.

She remembered a time when she was prepared to die for her duty, but hoped she might live. This is different: feeling prepared to die and hoping she might live _long enough_ to finish this last thing. A small shift that cracked her entire world. 

Caitrin murmured a quiet prayer under her breath as they ran, cut with curses and pauses to breathe, that she might just have _this final thing_ before she had to go. Like Ameridan, she would not be there for the Inquisition, would not help them through what would come to pass, but she could finish _this._

When they burst through the eluvian, she felt along her back for her axe, sinking against the wall of the storage room. Her chest felt tight, but they were all heaving for breath from running for so long, and for a moment she thought she could fool them. 

Then Thom reached his hand down for her, helped her to her feet as the others staggered away, dusting themselves off. Caitrin held her left hand to the side as it sparked with pain, and winced—an instant too late to turn her face from his. 

When the pain settled again, his eyes were hard and clear, and he didn’t look away from her. 

“Tell me,” he said lowly, so no one could hear.

She didn’t lie—how could she, when he’d seen what the Mark could do now?—but she didn’t wither again. 

“I don’t have much time,” she admitted, as gently as she could, and pressed her back against the stone to hold herself up. She watched his eyes widen, his throat working as he choked on his words. “We can finish this, Thom. If we—there’s time enough for that.”

He looked at her hand, the glow of the Mark emanating brighter than before from her gloved fist, and up to her wearied eyes. Caitrin blinked and Thom surged forward, kissed her desperately. With a quiet whimper, she yielded to him, parting her lips and cradling his cheek with her right hand. 

His beard was tangled and rough on her cheek and his mouth had the faint tang of blood in it from a cut. He was warm everywhere, it rolled off him, even through his heavy armor. 

She would remember this, etch this memory into her heart so she could cling to it when the end finally came. 

When she inhaled again, Thom drew away, searching her face for another sign of pain. Caitrin shook her head with a weak smile and pressed her forehead up to his. 

“I want to believe there’s a way to stop this,” he breathed, and she felt his smile when she mouthed her lips against his. 

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t have time to find out.”

Thom laughed, drawing his hands down her arms, twining his fingers in hers. “You want to save Thedas one more time before it’s over?” 

“I think I have enough time for that.”

“Let me come with you to the end.” His voice tilted with the request, almost a plea. Her heart split, and she nodded once, their noses bumping against each other. 

“Yes,” she breathed. “Don’t leave me alone.”

*

The first explosion lifted her from the ground, pulling a hollow scream out before Caitrin could stop it, and blew her into the trunk of a large tree some twenty paces back. When she groaned to her feet, her knees trembling with effort, she saw Dorian pushing himself up and felt her first stab of regret.

She limped toward the others, accepting a glass phial from Cassandra and handing it to Dorian immediately. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, after the glass was emptied, and when Caitrin had another shoved into her hand. “But I don’t think that you are, my dear.” 

She shook her head and drained the phial. It could only give her shallow refuge from the pain, but she’d found reason to hope for the first time since she’d woken up from the pain in her hand. 

Solas was alive. If she could find him—if he could save her—

But that was hoping, and hoping would matter for nothing if they couldn’t get to him before the Viddasala, to keep him alive. 

“We need to keep going,” she said, replacing the phial at her belt. When the others stared at her reluctantly, she offered them a smile that was meant to reassure them. 

“For once, both our objectives are in the same place. If we can stop Viddasala from reaching Solas first—”

“We can save Thedas,” Cassandra sighed, her brow tight with concern. 

“And you.” Thom pushed his sword back into its scabbard at his waist. “Lead the way.”

*

_Everything is pain. Her footfalls clatter against her raw nerves. Her armor shifts. The swing of her axe digs out a fresh shot of pain._

_Discharging the Mark hurts more than anything._

_For a moment when Caitrin slams back into the ground, her nose pressed into the vegetal decay of the soil, it hurts _less_. Then it builds again._

_Caitrin pushes herself up. Her legs are numb with pain. Her arms are heavy, too heavy to lift her axe, but she starts to run again._

_She releases the energy buildup in the Mark, goes skidding across the ground. The smell of earth, the soft touch of soil on her feverish cheek. Rising again, she pushes forward._

_It will be time soon, and there is still a little further yet to go._

*

For that blessed moment, there was nothing at all. There was only the lightness of some great burden lifted from her.

Caitrin waited for it all to pass from her, for the finality of darkness to sweep her from this, but it never came.

She was _alive._

It had been too long, so long that she forgot what her body was meant to feel like when it was at peace. What it was like to live without ticking away the seconds left in her life, hoping no one noticed that she was disappearing before their very eyes. 

She lifted her face to the sky, tears prickling the corners of her eyes and sliding freely down her cheeks, her remaining hand curled around the stump that was her left arm. The others might have thought she was dead. They might have been searching. 

Solas was gone, cracking open his betrayal, setting yet another impossible task in front of her. But the pain was gone, too, and Caitrin had been spared once again. Maker only knew why she had been chosen for this, but the others would need to know what happened. 

Their lives would go on as they’d hoped they would, only she would be there to see it.

And so she rose once again, and carried herself back to them.

**Author's Note:**

> I was struck by some of the visual clues in Trespasser that suggest that the Inquisitor is aware that the Mark is killing them as early as the first scene with Giselle, and the slight difference it makes in the narrative of the Exalted Council determining the future of the Inquisition. 
> 
> And since it works out really nicely that I can write this canon-compliant bit of angst without actually having to write an unhappy ending, here we are!


End file.
